Pierre-Philippe Louis, a French lawyer, and his wife, the former
Claire Céline Maldan, had temporarily fled to Belgium from political turmoil in
France when their second son, Pierre-Félix, was born December 10, 1870, in
Ghent. Pierre-Félix became an excellent student at the École Alsacienne, where
André Gide was in the class ahead of him. The two boys grew to be close friends
and together founded
Potache-revue in 1889. In 1890 Pierre
expressed his passion for classical Greek culture by changing the spelling of
his name to Louÿs (in French the name of the letter "y" means "Greek i")
and pronouncing the final "s" to give it a
Greek flavor.

Louÿs had another early literary friendship with the poet Paul Valéry,
who was still unknown when he and Louÿs became acquainted. Both young men were
members of the poet Stéphane Mallarmé's circle. For several years Louÿs was
also a friend of Oscar Wilde, although they eventually quarelled, as did Louÿs
and Gide. Another artist who formed an early friendship with Louÿs was the
composer Claude Debussy.

Louÿs's first book was a collection of poems
entitled
Astarte (1891). In 1895 he published what
is today his best-known work,
Les chansons de Bilitis (1895), which
exemplifies the type of eroticism that his work is noted for.
La femme et le pantin (1898) is often
considered his finest novel.

Women, including prostitutes, played a large
role in Louÿs's life. He married Louise de Heredia in 1899, but the marriage
ended in divorce in 1913. Among his mistresses was the dancer Claudine Roland,
who died in 1920. In 1923 he married Claudine's half-sister, Aline Steenackers,
the mother of his two children. A third child was born shortly after Louÿs's
death on June 8, 1925.

Manuscripts, correspondence, and assorted personal and third-party
papers make up the Carlton Lake Collection of the French poet and novelist
Pierre Louÿs and shed considerable light on his professional and private life.
The collection is arranged in four series: I. Works, 1880-1934 (3 boxes); II.
Correspondence, 1891-1921 (5 boxes); III. Personal, 1891-1918 (.5 box); and IV.
Third-Party Works and Correspondence, 1839-1900 (.5 box).

Louÿs's entire career is represented in the Works series, from
juvenilia to posthumously published verse, although with more emphasis on his
poetic than his prose works. Included are several versions of the manuscript of
his first book,
Astarte (1891), as well as numerous
iterations of one of his most important poems,
"Pervigilium mortis." Also present are
Louÿs's manuscripts for a proposed work on Corneille that was turned down by
publishers who were not amused at having previously been hoaxed by his claim
that
Les chansons de Bilitis was an authentic
ancient Greek manuscript.

Correspondence is the largest series in the
collection. It is divided into outgoing and incoming groups and arranged
alphabetically by correspondent. The largest single correspondence is with
Louis Loviot, friend and fellow man of letters. Other correspondents are
Louÿs's half-brother Georges Louis, the historian and novelist André Lebey,
writer Claude Farrère, writer Natalie Clifford Barney, actress and journalist
Musidora, Wilde biographer Robert Harborough Sherard, and his mistress Claudine
Roland, whose letters are bound in a single volume together with his letters to
her. Also present is correspondence with Marthe Du Bert, a woman whose
fascination for Louÿs led her to impersonate a journalist, forge letters, and
concoct an imaginary lesbian relationship in order to attract Louÿs's
attention. The collection includes several of her forged letters as well as an
untitled memorandum by Louÿs (in the Works series) giving an account of the
affair for possible legal prosecution.

The Personal series contains items
such as classroom notes, a pocket engagement book, an admission card to view
Egyptian monuments, and a copy of a newspaper left by composer Camille
Saint-Saëns on a café table, retrieved and documented by Louÿs.

The
Third-Party Works and Correspondence series includes the handwritten manuscript
of Natalie Clifford Barney's
Tis: Cinq petits dialogues grecs, several
manuscript poems by André Lebey, and a published copy of Henri Legrand's 1839
book
Los Angeles: Una hija, which is printed in
a mock-Arabic script that Louÿs claims, in a note laid in, to have deciphered.
(In the Works series there is also a folder of Louÿs's notes on Legrand.)